


never take it back

by ladyalysv (verity)



Series: when the bars all start to close [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Day drinking, Growing Up, M/M, Stanley Cup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7438406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/ladyalysv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kent turned 21 last week. He should probably take the Cup out on the Strip with DJ and Cally; that seems like the thing to do. Mom and Dad would fly out for it.</p><p>(Kent takes the Cup to Samwell. 2012.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	never take it back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts).



> thanks to ashe & dangercupcake for making this beautiful and to m. & imaginarycircus for audiencing. <3
> 
> content notes: brief moment of suicidal ideation

His third year in the show, Kent makes the _Body Issue_. They have him pose in an ice bath, then in an equally chilly shower. "I'm sensing a theme, brah," Kent says. "You want my dick nice and tiny."

"Gotta keep it under that loofah somehow," the photographer says, clicking away with her DSLR.

Kent throws back his head and laughs. That's the photo that makes the magazine—one hand sliding down his body suggestively, the other loosely gripping the loofah, his nipples stiff with the cold. The curve of his hip keeps it just below NC-17. Afterward, the guys plaster the locker room with copies. Someone even blows it up to poster size, the colors muddy and the texture grainy. Probably Daisy. "You gonna do a pinup calendar?" Soupy says. "Make the girls go wild."

Kent tightens the laces on his skates. "If ADIDAS asks nicely." That gets a nice round of chuckles.

He goes as a pinup girl that Halloween.

* * *

Kent spends most of the season hooking up with Rick whenever he's up from the AHL. Rick's 28, a fourth-liner better known for racking up penalty minutes than points: he can't afford to rock the boat. He's paranoid about even trading handies on a roadie. 

"DJ and Pop Rocks are crushing it in Halo right now," Kent points out, nodding toward their shared wall. "It's not like anybody's paying attention to who's where."

"Yeah, like you ever have to think about that," says Rick. They do it anyway, palms slick with spit, careful not to leave marks that can't be explained. It's the quietest and gentlest sex Kent's ever had. Rick doesn't sit with him at breakfast the next morning.

* * *

Kent keeps calling Jack. Still. On Jack's birthday, on holidays. The line used to ring, but now it goes right to voicemail. Whatever that means. 

When they went on roadies together, Jack would always fall asleep first, his breathing going slow and even. That soft rhythm put Kent right out, every time. He's kind of given up on Jack ever talking to him again, but he still fantasizes about what would happen if Jack picked up: hearing those steady breaths down the open line.

* * *

Rick doesn't get his name on the Cup, but Kent does. He's the first person to hoist it. For a moment, he feels like he could fly. Anything could be possible.

* * *

Timmers puts his kid in the Cup; Kent puts Kit Purrson in there. Who else can say their cat was in the Stanley Cup? Not a lot of people, that's all Kent is saying. She's only ten weeks old. Her claws skitter on the slick metal. Kent picks her up as soon as they get a good shot and she scrambles onto his shoulder. 

"Good job," he says to her, rubbing their cheeks together. "Knew you could do it, little buddy."

Nicola lowers her camera. A year ago, she was getting shots of Kent in the shower; now she's covering the team celebration. "I want another one of you together with the Cup. You think she'd eat out of there?"

"I mean, there's only one way to find out," Kent says.

That photo doesn't make ESPN’s feature, but Kent gets a copy and frames it: he and Kit leaning over the Cup, tongues out, ready to lap up milk. Kent doesn't care what anybody who comes into his apartment thinks about it. Everyone's already seen the shot from the locker room after the game, him chugging Cristal, Chucky sloshing beer out of the cup onto Kent's chest. He doesn't remember anyone taking that, but that's okay. It was for other people.

* * *

He goes to Toronto for Luka's Cup day and crashes in Soupy's condo for a week. Kent's been drunk for three or four days, just a pleasant, low-level simmer. Soupy's girlfriend Lauren is in the kitchen now, blending a breakfast round of freezer daiquiries. Kent's plans for the day include getting crossfaded and playing Donkey Kong. He can see Lake Ontario from the couch. He won the Stanley fucking Cup. Shit is good.

"They won't let me bring it to Maple Leaf Gardens with Dad." Soupy flops down next to Kent. "Like, what the fuck even is this bullshit, eh?"

Kent yawns. "That's just mean."

"To Dad, yeah." Pierre Soulard played for the Leafs from '86 to '93. It was the Leafs, so there was never a Cup to put Pierre Junior in. "I think we're gonna take it to Wonderland."

Last time Kent went to Wonderland, he was home from the Q for the summer. He and his cousins all went together, loosely supervised by the oldest, Nora, who was 19. Kent got sunburned standing in line to ride the Behemoth and the Shockwave. He hasn't thought about it in years. "I wanna come."

"Fuck yeah, of course," Soupy says. "Hey, baby, thanks." He sits up to take the daiquiri from Lauren.

Lauren passes Kent his own glass, already damp with condensation. "Here you go." She's taller than Kent, an actress; Soupy met her on the set of a Gatorade commercial.

"Thanks, Laur," Kent says. "You're the bomb."

* * *

Kent keeps drinking on the plane, vodka and Mr. & Mrs. T's—it's free in first class. He nurses two on the afternoon flight from Pearson to McCarran, which is enough to get him home before he starts to crash. He chugs a whole bottle of Evian before he lies down in bed. His birthday is tomorrow. Maybe he can sleep off the worst of it before then.

Kit curls up on the empty pillow next to Kent's and kneads the pillow with her tiny paws. She's out in two minutes. Kent spends hours dicking around on his phone. The idea of being drunk all summer sounds nice in theory, but Kent knows what that reality is. Anyway, he's gotta train. He's gotta start thinking about September, even though it's mid-July. He's the captain.

His phone buzzes. _Got any ideas for your Cup day?_ It's his agent.

 _Not yet_ , Kent texts back.

Jack was supposed to be here for Kent's Cup day. They wouldn't have won it together, but they would have lifted it together, after, in Kent's parents' backyard in Rochester. They would have gotten drunk around the pool like when they were kids, before Kent understood the difference between his and Jack's drinking. Lazy drunk, all day, like Kent had been this week. There would be girls in bikinis, because there were always girls in bikinis at this kind of thing, and all the guys they played with from the Q. That was the plan.

Kent turned 21 last week. He should probably take the Cup out on the Strip with DJ and Cally; that seems like the thing to do. Mom and Dad would fly out for it.

* * *

"Hey," Kent says. "I gotta—I need to see you today."

"How'd you get this number?" Jack says groggily. It's the first time Kent's heard his voice in three years.

"Doesn't matter. I just need to see you. You're at school, right?"

Jack says, "You called my fucking roommate, what the fuck do you think?" 

Kent cranes his neck toward the crowd spilling out into the Terminal A baggage claim. His flight got into Logan half an hour ago. "Okay. I mean, that's good. Can you—where's a good place to meet?"

"For what?" Jack says.

Kent says, "I brought the Cup." Not like he can keep it a secret. Boston's a hockey town; people already have their iPhones and Galaxies out, not even trying to be stealth about it. The one guy in an Aces beanie has his eyes on the luggage carousel, but it's only a matter of time.

Jack hangs up on him.

* * *

"Okay," Jack's roommate says. "Just to be clear, this isn't because Jack wants to see you. This is because I want to drink beer out of the Stanley Cup in our dorm room."

One of the Keepers is driving; the other is in the back seat of the rental minivan with the Cup strapped in beside him. Kent is in the middle bench. The whole thing feels uncomfortably like a road trip with his parents to see Nana Parson in Potsdam, except for the part where his parents are currently with Nana Parson in Potsdam. Kent wedges his phone between his shoulder and his ear and tries to pretend he's alone in the car. "That's fine. Just, like, good beer."

Jack's roommate says, "Fine, but I'm 19? You're buying, bro."

Great, underage drinking. This is exactly how Kent wanted this to start. "You got a deal."

Jack lives right across the road from Samwell's student union, so Kent gets the Keepers to agree to hang out in the knockoff Starbucks and use the free wifi. He has to smuggle the Cup and beer inside a minifridge box he finds behind a dumpster. Fortunately, it's move-in weekend. Kent has sunglasses and a Red Sox cap that he picked up in the airport: he's relatively inconspicuous.

"This is definitely the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened in my life," Jack's roommate says, opening the door. "Hi, I'm Shitty. Did you steal that hand truck?"

"Yes," Kent says. "Where's Zimms?"

Shitty makes grabby hands. "In the bathroom. Gimme."

While Jack is in the bathroom—wherever that is—Kent and Shitty make headway into the growler that Kent picked up from Harpoon. "This thing is fucking heavy," Shitty says when he hoists the Cup. "You're gonna have to help unless we want to lose our security deposit on move-in day. I think Jack can use a camera."

Kent says, "You think?"

"Hooboy," says Shitty.

The room is half-unpacked, clothes spilling out of duffle bags, books jammed into bookshelves at random. _Wide Sargasso Sea_ , _A People's History of the United States_ , _A Hero of Our Time_. Kent doesn't recognize any of the titles. Jack's bed is lofted over his desk, unmade; Shitty's is on risers to accommodate storage bins, a rice cooker, a poorly-concealed bong.

Some kids are passing around a frisbee outside, their yelps coming through the half-open window. "You want to watch something?" Shitty says. "I've got Netflix, I've got all of _Girls_..."

"I don't know what that is," Kent says.

Shitty grins. "No time like the present, my man."

Kent and Shitty are sliding towards drunk and two episodes into Hannah Horvath and her Brooklyn struggles by the time Jack shows up. "Hey, my man, pull up a chair," Shitty says. "We got beer, we got the Cup, we got it all."

Jack looks a little taller, a little broader. Kent doesn't remember what he wanted to say. He doesn't want this Jack. He wants his Jack, he wants his Jack _back_. He wants this to be Jack's Cup. This isn't what he wants. His mouth opens. He can't say anything.

"I'm not touching it," Jack says.

"Yeah, that's fine," Shitty says. "We got it worked out, bro. Kent lifts, I drink, you take the photo. I'm gonna frame this shit."

Jack says, "Fine. Whatever."

They do a couple takes, makes sure Shitty gets a good shot. Most of them look okay. "You're the man," Shitty says, slinging an arm around each of their shoulders. He's had a lot of beer. "You're both the man. I love you guys, okay?"

"You're so drunk," Jack says, half smiling. For a moment, he's there, in that flicker of tenderness—the Jack who was Kent's—and then he's gone.

Kent doesn't bother to conceal the Cup on the way out. He carries it right into the Samwell student union.

* * *

No one prepared Kent for what it would be like to give up the Stanley Cup after he'd had it. He'll see the Cup again soon, of course, but now it's off with its Keepers on a plane to Quebec City to meet Daisy and his family. His own flight to Las Vegas leaves an hour later. Kent is flying first class, second row, right window seat. He could cancel his flight right now and get a rental car instead, drive it into a wall somewhere. It's tempting.

The flight is pretty bumpy. Kent drinks three Jack & Cokes to take the edge off. He took a cab to the airport, he'll take a cab back; it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. They won the Stanley Cup: there's nowhere up to go from here. The Aces won it, but they can't keep it. All they can do is try to go for it again in the fall. It's not like a butterfly you can let go and just fucking hope it flies back to you. 

This is probably the alcohol talking. Or maybe it's reality sinking in. Kent's down to the ice in his cup and the flight tracker says they're over Nebraska. He's never been there. He'd never been to Samwell before today. All that's visible from the window is the storm beside them, lightning flashing a few miles off. When Kent closes his eyes, he sees Jack again, his intent focus as he fussed with the buttons on Shitty's DSLR. They didn't take any photos of Jack.

The ice rattles in Kent's cup. If Kent dies right now, he's going to become a ghost. He'll haunt Jack the way Jack's haunted him. Jack didn't even have to die to do it.

* * *

"They want you back for the _Body Issue_ , too," Kent's agent says. "Special digital edition, they're shooting video—"

Kent yawns. "Do they think there's room for the Cup in the shower?"

"Is that a yes?"

"I don't know," Kent says. "Let me think about it."

He scoops Kit's litter box instead. Then he goes for a run on the treadmill and cools off with 50 laps in the swimming pool. The sky is clear, vivid blue sheeting down behind the mountains; it's supposed to hit 100F this afternoon. 

Kent rinses off in the shower by the pool, towels his hair dry. Changes his swim trunks for sweatpants. He ends up in the living room, excavating the couch in search of the remote. Kit climbs up onto the back of the couch where she can knead his bare shoulders with her claws. "A- _ha_ ," he says when he finds it, scrolling through the listings for HBO on Demand. "Sweet."

He's got eight more episodes of _Girls_ to go.


End file.
